Thursday, 25 October 2012

GAZA CITY (Ma'an) -- The body of 23-year-old Palestinian man was recovered after he was killed in a tunnel collapse in the southern Gaza Strip, civil defense teams said Thursday.

Walid Nasser Marouf, from Beit Lahiya, died in a tunnel under Gaza's border with Egypt near Rafah, officials said.

Two other Palestinians are missing after the tunnel fell in on Wednesday evening, they said.

Medics say over 160 Palestinians have died in the network of underground tunnels since Israel imposed a siege on the Gaza Strip in 2006.

Egypt started closing the tunnels after an Aug. 5 attack in Sinai when gunmen killed 16 Egyptian soldiers. Egypt suspects the tunnels were used by some of the militants. Hamas says no one from Gaza was involved in the attack. more

Israel’s hasbara – propaganda – organs are cranked up to the maximum right now complaining that Israel is once again the innocent victim of barrages of rockets from Gaza, and justifiying Israel’s latest killings of Palestinians in Gaza as a necessary and legitimate response.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claimed today, “We neither chose nor initiated this escalation but if it continues we are prepared for much more extensive and deeper action” in Gaza.

Don’t believe the lies. Israel has been conducting a systematic campaign of “preemptive” extrajudicial executions in Gaza, knowing full well that this would bring on rocket fire. But Israel thinks the price is worth it.

Israel’s southern communities are bracing for what may prove further escalation in rocket fire, following Saturday and Sunday’s surgical IAF strikes, which left three terrorists dead; but Colonel Tal Hermoni, the IDF’s outgoing Gaza Division commander, is convinced that the benefits of the IDF’s operations outweigh the danger.

“If we wouldn’t be taking them out, the same terrorists would have infiltrated the border and killed 20 kids at a holiday party,” he said Sunday.